Super Classic Videogames

SATURN MOD CHIP INSTALLATION

I’m not responsible for any damage you may do to your Saturn by performing this modification. There isn’t much to worry about, but I just don’t want anybody mad at me < alt="13" />Thanks to Jess Ragan for his help in creating this guide!

What You Need

A model 2 (32-pin - usually round-buttoned) Saturn

One Saturn mod chip

A soldering iron

Possibly some extra wire (see step #2)

Transparent tape/Scotch tape

Scissors

Phillips head screwdriver with a long thin neck that can reach the Saturn’s case screws.

A copy of a Saturn game for testing purposes.

A nail file or something similar (may only need this if chip does not fit snugly)

Step 1 - Preparation

Keep your chip safe by leaving it in the anti-static bag that I ship them in.

Unplug your Saturn

Turn your Saturn upside down on a table

Remove the Saturn’s case screws

Put the screws in a safe place

Turn the Saturn right side up.

Step 2 - Install Chip and Hook-up Lens Cable

Look at the twisted white ribbon cable running from the center of the system to the shiny metal box on the right hand side.

Part of the ribbon will be taped to this metal box.

First peel the tape off the metal box, then gently unplug the right end of the ribbon cable.

Take this end of the cable and plug it into the connector on the modchip as pointed out below.

Plug the chip itself into the plug where the lens cable was.

If the chip does not plug in easily, you may need to file down the side edges of the plug in order to give it a better fit.

Step 3 - Getting Link Cables Layed Out

Below you can see the linking (soldering) points of the two cables from the IC chip towards the motherboad.

You can also see how the lens cable is to hooked up to the chip.

A close-up shot of both solder points follows in the next steps.

You may need to add some extra wire to extend the link cables’ reach across the machine.

Step 4 - Connect the Power Link Cable

The small wire soldered into the left side of the mod chip is called a jumper cable

Attach this jumper cable to the Saturn to power the chip

On the left side of the Saturn, there are four metal pins in a vertical row

Take the end of the jumper cable and plug it into the second pin from the top (on the back of the unit) even if you see 5 pins instead of 4. (It’s the one marked 5VA — if one does not work, try the other).

Below is a close-up of where to solder the power cable (red)

Please note the power wire MUST solder to the power socket directly!

Step 5 - Connect the Signal Link Cable

There are two ways to do this step:

The original way was to solder the signal (blue) wire to pin 14 of the 32-pin chip.

To make this easier, put 2 pieces of thin cardboard surrounding and isolated the 14th pin

Then you soldered to the 14th pin very easily, ignoring the other pins

Below is close-up of where to solder the Signal cable (blue)

OR

You can get rid of the signal cable altogether and link the signal point to point B with a bit of solder instead of linking to pin 14 of the 32-pin chip.

Step 6: Finishing Up

Take a few pieces of tape and lay them over the ribbon that’s hanging over the chip

Tape it down onto the shiny metal box so the ribbon and tape hold the chip in place.

Secure the ribbon with a few more pieces of tape, because you never can be too sure.

Before you put the case back onto the Saturn, make sure everything is ready to run.

Are the connections tight?

Is the mod chip taped down well?

Once everything looks good, re-assemble your Saturn case.

Testing

Set your Saturn back up, plug in the controllers

hook it up to your television set

Put a burned backup CD into the Saturn and turn the system on

The disc should play just like a real Saturn game.

If not, you’ll need to open the Saturn again and see what you did wrong.

80 Comments:

Instructions have been re-worded and organized in order to be clearer and more unique, as requested.

Need some help with troubleshooting. I Installed a mod chip a while ago but now my Saturn has stopped working. It goes straight to the Bios(?) screen and says “checking disc format…” but the laser does not move. On startup rather than beginning with the black screen where the many pieces fly together to form the Saturn symbol, it
loads right into the silver Saturn screen with the date at the bottom. I’d like to know if there is something wrong with the chip, ie loose wire or something non-chip related…

Any help is greatly appreciated.

thank you Racketboy i bought my modchip from you and installed it on my Japanese Sega Saturn. I installed it right however i did have trouble pushing the chip into the saturns cd pin out. It didn’t work at all until i did that. But now its working and it feels damn good coz i got a load of backups that i had to use swap trick with in the past

Howdy, Man!
The modchip arrived OK here in Brazil!
Just a tip: the A< ->B jumper to substitute the “blue” connection to pin 14 have not worked in TecToy’s brazilian Saturn. All Sega products are reassembled and sold here by TecToy. It’s a “model 2″, with a 21 way flat, 32 pins chip and round buttons, but needed the wire from “A” to “pin 14″ to work. No happy A-B jumper here.
Thank You for sending it so quickly!
seeya!

Great job this little modchip.
I’ve just received it (7 days for transatlantic shipment), installed it and unleashed the Saturn’s capabilities to read CD-R.

One thing that may help some of the future modders : the chip needs to be deeply input in the slot. Failure to ensure it’s gone all the way down into the slot will prevent any game from working. (message “verifying disk format” will display and disappear)

First and foremost I wanted to say thanks to Racketboy for a VERY fast shipping turnaround.. Also When I got my mod chip I couldnt get it to work at all,.. Cd’s Would not spin (originals + Cdrs). I thought it might be the A - B connection so I tried the pin connection.. Same result. So I emailed Racketboy and gave em the low down on the problem.. (BTW - the chip was in all the way) He then told me send the chip back and he’d send me a new one.. Sure enough I did, he did, and it works like a charm.. Although I didnt get to try the A - B method again because I clipped the wires from the chip so I didn’t have to solder them to the board again.. Anyways thanks for the fast, customer satisfatory service!

these instructions are a bit dated.. It’s been found that you can just bridge A and B on the modchip with solder, and just connect the red wire to the 5V and you’re done.
There’s no need for a signal wire.

Thanks to racketboy for selling them at a good price and providing the excellent guide and troubleshooting (although I haven’t required that)

As I didn’t know how to solder I had a friend supervising me. I’ll just like to highlight the tricky parts of the process as far as I was concerned

1. soldering the power cable can be a bit tricky, as the contact is in the plastic square which is harder to reach with the soldering iron (for someone inexperienced, at least)

2. fitting the chip was hard. I guess this is why there is the advice of “filing” the edges for an easier fit. I wasn’t sure of where I was supposed to be able to file without damaging anything (maybe that part could be clearer in the guide?) so I just plugged it in eventually. It had to be pushed in with some force, and if you don’t do it properly (with care not to bend it) I can imagine one could snap it in this part of the fitting process, so be careful.

installation was pretty easy, i didnt even sodder, i used the A to B method and just inserted the wire from point A into the hole in the circuit board at point B and wrapped a little (1/4 inch) of the wire over board to keep it in place, and the power wire i simply wedge it in nice and secure to soldering at all, only difference i notice is that it takes slightly longer for games to boot. thanks racketboy.

For some strange reason, the mod in mine has to be mounted backwards, so that the laser cable faces towards the outside of the case, and the cable needs to mounted upside down. Its the only setup where the laser will actually move. And the Saturn still goes straight to the audio screen. It won’t play any games, CD-R or proper Saturn games. Any thoughts anyone?

i bought the chip from racketboy
and it took a week to get to me
in the uk scotland.packaging was
good and the chip works great tho
i did have problems with my saturn to begin with.i bought a model 2 saturn but the power supply and cd drive were the same as a model1 saturn but i found a good tutorial
on my version of saturn and followed it and also done the a+b
wire setup and all works perfect.

Mod chip and memory card showed up today installed the chip (no soldering yet) and started testing it. It runs great and the memory card now lets me play my X-men vs street fighter game. Super fast shipping bought the chip on Friday had it by Monday.

Hey, Got my chip installing on a model 2 32pin. I got everything in and used the A+B method, soldered at the power point. But when I tried to fire her up afterwards the drive motor would not spin, and even if there was nothing in the drive it said checking disc. After checking for snug connections i noticed the drive open indicator position did not matter it still did it. Long story short 10 mins later I resoldered the A-B connection, and vwalla everything works great. My advice to anyone doing this method is to completely unsolder the wire the comes on the chip and drop a bead bridge between the two for the best connection.

I had two failures before getting it successfully working, but that was just difficulties getting the cd cable passthrough properly plugged in. I very slightly filed the edges of the connector and tried again, and it’s all up and running.

I used the A->B bridge technique, on a model 2 Saturn which works great so far. For a hardware mod chip, this was about as painless of an install as I think you can get.

Wass Up Racket Boy, I got your chip in today. It took about three day’s, not including new years day, and the day after. I quickly got it working in about 2 hours. I wish the directions would be a little clearer though. I did everything in the guide, but could’nt get it to work. I then looked over the guide a bit more, and in the picture, which I could hardly see, that there were 3 pins,were the wires were going into. I was doing the A + B method. What I did was solder the power wire, over the middle connection then into the signal wire. I soldered all three in to it. I then diagnosed the problem by doing it all over again, reconnecting everything, and doing the soldering again. But I had to Desolder the 3 braids and connect the power wire, then the a+b method solder. Everything is good to go. I almost thought is wasnt working, because I put in a downloaded ISO,and it said “Game Disc Unsuitable for this system.” Then I figured it was a japanese game and did’nt patch the iso. But I quickly burned my U.S Game and it boots FLAWLESSLY NOW.

Directions I Did.(Model 2)
1) Take out 5 Screws underneath Saturn.
2) Lift out top, and Disconnect Ribbon Cables for drive, and ground yourself.
3)On the chip, desolder the signal wire, and save it. Connect the middle tab to the signal tab with solder.
4) Shave off sides with scissor, the sides that goes into the old ribbon cable.
5) Plug CD Ribbon cable to modchip, then into the Mother Board.
6) Use the extra signal wire and solder it to the end of the power wire. It’s a little to short, and if installed with tension my come out over time. So I just used the signal wire and soldered it the the 5 volt cable.
7) Check to see if it works, and put back case and screws.

I bought the mod chip from Racketboy, and have now got it working on an Australian Saturn.

Saturn: MK-80200A-03 (32pin model 2 equiv)

I initially soldered the signal line to pin 14, but this didn’t work at all (CD spindle didn’t power up and start spinning). I found that when I switched to the (simpler) A+B method it all worked perfectly!

Thanks.

(most trouble I had was discovering that the Australian Saturn is set to Europe region - was expecting the east asian one…)

I just received my Sega Saturn that I got from eBay (model 2). I had my chip for a few days now so today was the day! I followed all instructions I could find here, then I decided to try it. (Btw, I used the 14 pin method using scotch tape only) When I saw that the Saturn animation didn’t showed anymore, I knew there was something wrong. I tried many things for a few hours, then I thought that there was probably a power problem. I finally got to put the red wire in its place carefully. Then I started my Saturn again, the animation was back! My brother was totally skeptical about all that. I told him: “Believe me, it’s gonna work!” So I patched Radiant Silvergun then burned it. You know what? It works!!! Everything is just fine! Thank you RacketBoy! I know absolutely nothing about electronics and I managed to mod my Saturn so believe me, anyone can!

Great mod, fantastic instructions. I soldered to the 14th pin (I couldn’t get the loop option work). Everything works great. Thanks for being the last option out there Now we just need these kind of instructions for the NES 2 a/v mod!!!

Thanks Racketboy for the ultra-fast shipping! Some things I noticed in the progress of installing the chip:
1. Since I had a 64-pin chip instead of the 32-pin chip on the motherboard, I used the A-B method, just melting the solder already on the contact B and connecting the black wire to it.
2. First time I checked it, I put the mod chip in backwards. 2nd time, I had the lens cable in backwards. Then it worked.
3. It works, but in a weird way. CD-R and real game both boot into the cd-player. After hitting ‘play’ when the songs of the disc appear, I hit reset and the system boots into the game. A little more intricate than I would have liked, but can’t really complain. Guardian Heroes works great.

Hey racketboy. Do you have more Saturn Modchips. I would like to buy one more, and pick up another model 2 saturn. How much would you like for 1 more chip and the set of Saturn ISO’s? Please racketboy.
Email me at JJCoolBoy3000@yahoo.com
Thanks

i bought one of your chips a while ago but couldn’t get it working. its a 32 pin pal saturn and i connected the A & B points together.
the weird thing is that with the chip installed not even originals boot. it only enters the menu where i can play the music that’s on the cd (original or backup).
any idea whats wrong?

hey racketboy, I was wanting to purchase a modchip, but it says in the comments here you might not have any, but it also says in the page for the modchip that they are in stock… sooo? I was willing to pay for one tonight

Hey Racketboy, do you know how I can get Rocketbeetle (from the segaxtreme.net forums)’s attention. He’s never on the forums and I need to know more about that switch he installed on the saturn. Like what kind of switch do I need and where do I get it?

Just wanted to let you know I got my modchip yesterday and installed it last night in my Model 2 system. Installation was a breeze, even with what little soldering skill I have. Got a solder line from A->B, had to trim the excess board on either side of the mobo connector of the chip to get it to fit. The power lead was plenty long so there were no worries with that. Worked right away.

i bought a mod chip a few months ago, and unfortunately couldn’t test it right away due to buying a Saturn that was shot. So i finally got one yesterday, and tested it out, and i can’t seem to get backups running. I’ve followed the tutorial to the letter and still am having trouble. Could the chip itself be bad? Can i ship it to you to test it?? Let me know. thanks,

Awesome, pure awesome! Racketboy is very quick and responsive, and his mod chip works wonderfully! I can now stash my originals away for safekeeping! Thanks racketboy, I will try to buy more from you, though I don’t do ebay at the moment.

Thankyou for the chip just brilliant works perfect. Installation was very easy besides trying to fit the chip into the cd lens slot on mobo just ued the blade of the scissors to trim down the sides for a perfect fit.

I dont know which Saturn version I have. On the outside, it has round BLACK buttons; does that make a difference? I noticed the circuit board below the lens is a bit different, the 32 pin chip appears to be below the plastic part of the lens. Also, how big is the mod chip? From the pictures and from looking at my saturn it appears too big. If anyone could help me that would be great.

i just ordered this and i forgot one thing, do the backup games you burn have to be burnt at a certain speed like 4x or something? because i have a dreamcast and i couldent get burnt games to run unless i burnt the games at 4x speed. i have img burn and it was burning some games at 10.1x speed, is that too fast or does it not matter? if someone could help that would b great

Hi got my chip today thanks but I can’t get it to work have hoked it up as shown in the guid and followed very carfully
I have a model 2 saturn and am not new to the mod sece hace moded plenty of system in past but for some reason this will not work! With the chip in the saturn will not even spin up a disk no matter whats in there the lens will not fire anything but take it out an put the ribbon back on its own and it will work fine any ideas??

Thanks for the chip, works perfectly, just definitely could’ve used a smaller soldering tip than the only one I had at home. Now I can finally put the saturn back onto my shelf and play more than Space Hulk….

Excellent Mod chip!
Thank you so much for being one of the remainder USA Saturn mod chip venders. I appreciate the great response to my faulty chip problem, and the second chip worked flawlessly. It was a pleasure doing business with you and I hope you can satisfy Saturn fans for years to come.

Just a notation: When putting solder from point A to B it helps a lot if it is done on both sides. For one reason or another I did it on one side and had no response from the system, but when I applied it to the other side it worked fine. Does it matter which side you solder points A and B together or was it probably just a bad connection on the first try?

Mod chip and Memory card came the other day. Memory card didn’t seem to work but then i recalled that the old memory card I had died assuming it was the card. I’m not convinced it is the Saturn. Also I have the 64 pin Saturn which means a lot of pain in the ass. If i cant extend the memory what is the point of getting to play a lot of games. I’m on the hunt for a model 2 Saturn now. Excellent service from Racket boy, some confusion with the payment but he was responsive and pleasent

I have installed this on my Saturn w/ relative ease compared to Xbox, Wii, PSX and others and able to play those “games”. I have a question does a modchip exists that allows to play JAP games on a US saturn w/o the 4-1 in cart.

Installed within 15 minutes flat, so far works perfect for all the backups I have for my Model 2 Saturn. A way better solution to the swapping disc. I recommend this chip to anyone , and its really easy to install.

The shipping took about ten days, pretty good.

P.S. you are going to have to slightly file down the terminal of the modchip to get it to fit, but other then that, its all game playing.

I just wanted to give a big THANK YOU to racketboy! Your tutorial was great and following everything to the T helped out. Whoever does this make SURE you really push that chip into the slot on the board! That messed me up for a bit and yes, bridging the A+B spots on the chip was much easier than adding a cable to that extremely small 14th pin.

Thanks also for the quick shipping and service. If you sell anything else other than the chip and the RAM Expansion cart, I would buy from you. Great help!

It has been a pleasure doing business with you and I am very satisfied with your communication throughout the transaction and how fast the mod chip arrived. The mod chip works great. If anyone is doing the signal wire method, I would suggest melting some solder on the end of the signal wire and then soldering it to the 14th pin because this way you don’t have to worry about holding the wire, solder, and soldering iron. It made it a lot easier for me anyway.

I have a model 2 32 pin Sega Saturn. Installed the chip with the A-B bridge, and the cd-rom won’t spin up. I get checking disc and 2 green cubes. I read it could be a power problem. Is here another point I can soldier the power to on the chip?